Body Work by Sara Paretsky

This is my third Sara Paretsky novel about her female private investigator, V. (as in Victoria, Vic) I. Warshawski. Despite having a well-paying corporate customer, Vic gets pulled into pro bono service to solve the murders of two sisters. The intrigue involves veterans of the Iraqi conflict, as well as the corporations that provide security and are making tons of money for their efforts. The Guamans, the Latino family of the two murdered girls don’t seem to want Vic’s involvement since the defense contractor is paying them money to stay quiet about the details of the girls’ deaths. There is a great figure in this book, the Body Artist, and it is through her that all the plots are eventually tied together. The Body Artist, i.e., Karen Buckely and Fannie Pindero, performs at a hip club in Chicago. She appears nude on stage with some paintings on her body, and then she allows audience members to paint whatever they want on her as their artistic expressions. The whole act is weirdly disturbing to the audience who keep selling out the performances. But, in performance after performance, one guy keeps writing long numbers on her ass which is clearly a code to someone, but the codes are indecipherable. One woman, one of the sisters who gets murdered, keeps painting her dead sister’s picture with a mysterious logo which repeatedly agitates a veteran for no obvious reason. Paretsky does a good job keeping the connections between the plots a secret until the end. Overall, this was an average read. It is great to have a woman writing in this genre, and she has a different take on the detective’s life, but ultimately, there are better writers out there. I think I’m done with Paretsky.